Education

Research Interests

Research Interests

Enid Schildkrout began her African field research in Ghana and Bourkina Faso in the 1960’s when she studied changing concepts of ethnicity and identity among second-generation immigrants living in Kumasi, Ghana. She has followed a number of families from her initial fieldwork for five decades and continues this research among Ghanaians from the same communities living in New York City. In the late 1970s and early 1980s she did field research in Kano, northern Nigeria, where she studied the economic roles of children. Her research focused on the economic interdependence of women and children and the relationship between child labor and education. She subsequently did fieldwork in Mali, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Namibia on a variety of topics centered on art and museums in Africa. She has worked extensively with museum collections and conducted an in-depth study of the history of the art of the Mangbetu people (Democratic Republic of Congo). Dr. Schildkrout has curated many groundbreaking exhibitions including African Reflections: Art from Northeastern Zaire; Body Art: Marks of Identity; Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria; and Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art.

2009 Dynasty and Divinity, Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria, with Henry John Drewal, published in English and Spanish. Museum for African Art. Published also for the British Museum as Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa.

2009 "Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria" with Henry John Drewal. Tribal Arts. No 53. Autumn 2009. Pp. 76-85. University of Washington Press (Distributor). Published as Kingdom of Ife by the British Museum in 2010.

2008 Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art. with Dale Rosengarten and Theodore Rosengarten, New York: Museum for African Art. University of Washington Press (Distributor)

2008 "Les Parisiens d'Afrique: Mangbetu Women as Works of Art" in Barbara Thompson, Ed. Black Womanhood Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body. University of Washington Press. Pp.71-93.

2006 "The Beauty of Science and the Truth of Art: Museum Anthropology at the Crossroads" in Cordula Grewe (ed.), Exhibiting the Other: Museums of Mankind and the Politics of Cultural Representation (Transatlantische Historische Studien, Vol. x). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart